Kira’s eyes snapped open.

Why had she woken? Some change in the environment had roused the Soft Blade, and it her. An almost imperceptible shift in the air currents circulating throughout the Wallfish. A distant whir of machinery coming to life. A slight decrease in the otherwise stifling temperature. Something.

A jolt of alarm caused her to glance at the nearby airlock. The Jelly, Itari, was still inside where it ought to be, encased in its secreted pod, barely visible in the dull red light of the long ship-night.

Kira let out her breath, relieved. She really didn’t want to have to fight the Jelly.

“G-Gregorovich?” she said. Her voice was rusty as an old wrench. She coughed and tried again, but the ship mind still didn’t answer. She tried a different tack: “Morven, are you there?”

“Yes, Ms. Navárez,” the Wallfish’s pseudo-intelligence answered. “Where are we?” Kira’s throat was so parched, the words came out in a

faint rasp. She tried to swallow, despite the lack of moisture in her mouth. “We have just arrived at our destination,” said Morven.

“Sol,” Kira croaked.

“That is correct, Ms. Navárez. Sol system. The Wallfish emerged from FTL four minutes and twenty-one seconds ago. Standard arrival procedures are in effect. Captain Falconi and the rest of the crew will be awake soon.”

They’d made it. They’d actually made it. Kira dreaded to think about all the things that might have happened since they’d left 61 Cygni six months ago.

It hardly seemed real that they’d been traveling for half a year. The wonders of hibernation, artificial or otherwise.

“Has anyone hailed us?” she asked.

“Yes, Ms. Navárez,” Morven replied, prompt as could be. “Fourteen messages from UMC monitoring stations. I have explained that the crew is currently indisposed. However, local authorities are most insistent that we identify our system of origin and our current mission as soon as possible. They are rather agitated, Ms. Navárez.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Kira muttered. Falconi could deal with the UMC once he was out of cryo. He was good at that sort of thing. Besides, she knew he would want to speak for the Wallfish.

Feeling uncomfortably stiff, she began to extract herself from the nest of blankets and webbing she’d constructed close to the airlock.

Her hand.

Her forearm and hand that she had cut off in the Jelly ship had … reappeared. Astonished, disbelieving, Kira held up the arm, turned it so she could see every part, worked her fingers open and closed.

She wasn’t imagining things. The arm was real. Hardly believing, she touched it with her other hand, feeling fingers sliding across fingers. Only five days had passed since she’d last woken, and in that time, the Soft Blade had constructed a perfect replica of the flesh she had lost.

Or had it?

A sudden shade of fear colored Kira’s thoughts. Drawing a breath, she focused on the back of her hand and, with an effort of will, forced the Soft Blade to retreat.

It did, and she uttered a soft cry as the shape of her hand caved inward, melting away like ice cream on a hot summer’s day. She recoiled, both mentally and physically, losing her focus in the process. The Soft Blade snapped back into shape, again assuming the form of her missing limb.

Tears filmed her eyes, and Kira blinked, feeling a sense of bitter loss. “Dammit,” she muttered, angry with herself. Why was she letting the missing hand affect her so much? Getting an arm or a leg replaced wasn’t that big of a deal.

But it was. She was her body, and her body was her. There was no separation between mind and matter. Her hand had been a part of her self-image for her entire life up until Bughunt, and without it, Kira felt incomplete. For a moment she’d had hope that she was whole again, but no, it wasn’t to be.

Still, she had a hand, and that was better than the alternative. And the fact that the Soft Blade had managed to replicate her missing limb was cause for optimism. Why had it done so now and not before? Because it knew they were nearing the end of their trip? As a demonstration of the sort of cooperation she’d been attempting to train all the way from Bughunt? Kira wondered. Regardless of the answer, she felt vindicated in the results. The Soft Blade had acted of its own volition (although perhaps guided by her own, unvoiced desires) and in a constructive manner at that.

Again, Kira examined her hand, and she marveled at the detail. It was, so far as she could tell, a near-perfect copy of the original. The only real difference she noticed was a slight disparity in density; the new arm felt perhaps a hair heavier. But it was a small change, hardly perceptible.

Still testing the mobility of her new fingers, Kira climbed out of the nest. She attempted to pull up the date on her overlays and only then realized that

—as on the trip to Bughunt—the Soft Blade had absorbed her contacts.

Belatedly she remembered the small case containing the replacements Vishal had printed for her. She dug it out from the blankets and carefully placed each transparent lens onto the corresponding eye.

She blinked and felt a sense of comfort as the familiar HUD of her overlays popped up. There now. She was a fully functioning person again.

Resisting the urge to check the news, Kira left the airlock, pulled herself along the walls until she reached the center of the Wallfish, and then started up the main shaft.

The ship was still so quiet, empty, and dark, it felt abandoned. If not for the sound of the life-support fans, it might have been a derelict drifting alone through space for gods knew how long. Kira felt like a scavenger moving through halls that had once been inhabited by others … or like an explorer opening a centuries-old mausoleum.

Her thoughts returned to the city on Nidus and their dire findings there. She growled and shook her head, annoyed. Her imagination was getting the better of her.

As she reached the level below the Control deck, the thrust alert sounded. Taking heed, Kira planted her feet on the floor, and a proper sense of weight pressed her down—there was again a down!—as the Wallfish’s fusion drive roared back to life.

She sighed with relief, welcoming the burn.

The surrounding lightstrips flickered and changed from red to the bluish-white glow of ship-day. The light was almost painfully bright after so long spent in the somber dark. Kira shielded her face until her eyes adjusted.

Falconi and the rest of the crew were just emerging from cryo when Kira arrived at the ship’s storm shelter. Dropping to all fours on the deck, Sparrow dry-heaved like a cat with a hairball.

“God, I hate long runs,” the woman said, and wiped her mouth. “Good, you’re up,” said Kira.

Falconi grunted. “If you can call it that.” He looked as green as Sparrow, and like all the crew, he had bruised circles under his eyes. Kira didn’t envy them the side effects of such an extended cryo sleep.

Sparrow hacked again and then staggered to her feet and joined Falconi, Nielsen, and Hwa-jung as they retrieved clothes from their lockers. Vishal took longer to get going. Once he did, he went around handing out the little blue pills Kira knew so well. They helped with the nausea, as well as replenishing some of the body’s lost nutrients.

Vishal offered one of the pills to her as well, but she declined. “What’s the shape of things?” Falconi asked, pulling on his boots. “Not sure yet,” said Kira.

Then Gregorovich’s voice broke in on them with a laughing, teasing tone. “Greetings, my lovelies. Welcome back to the land of the living. Yes, oh yes. We’ve survived the great journey across the void. Once again we have defied the dark and lived to tell the tale.” And he laughed until the ship rang with the sound of his voice.

“Someone’s in a good mood,” said Nielsen as she closed her locker.

Vishal joined her and bent his head to ask her something in an undertone. “Hey,” said Sparrow, taking a proper look at Kira. “Where’d you get the

new arm?”

Kira shrugged, self-conscious. “The Soft Blade. I woke up with it.” “Huh. Just make sure it doesn’t get away from you.”

“Yes, thank you.”

All of the cryo tubes were open save Trig’s. Kira went to pay her respects. Through the frosted viewplate, the kid looked the same as before, his expression unsettlingly serene. If not for the deathly pallor of his skin, he might have been sleeping.

“Right,” said Falconi as he started toward the door. “Let’s see what’s what.”